2008 KØS, Strange Antenna Challenge^SM

Doug KI4Y0B
Operating from Callahan, Florida
Saturday & Sunday, March 24th & 25th

Doug KI4YOB Reports:

    The weather forecasted thunderstorms overnight Friday, into Saturday. Fortunately, this did not happen, and Saturday started out bright and sunny. Up at 7am to get things set up. Here is the site of my satellite K0S station for the challenge.

    Site with 10 x 10 canopy, table & bench:

    The station is now set up ! Kenwood TS450S, Kenwood TS-60 (for 6 meters), MFJ-269 Tuner, DuraComm power supply, Kenwood extension speaker, K0S log sheets, notepad, pencils, and Harley Davidson pocket watch.

    Air choke and PVC ‘breakout box’:

    My first antenna. Stainless steel kitchen sink, resting atop a full size metal bedspring. Marginal reception at best, no contacts made for 2 hours. (11am-1pm) I then decided to elevate this set up........

    Reception a little better, made one ‘local’ contact, signal report FROM local station,"barely out of the mud." This was about as high as I could lift, approx. 4 ½ ft above ground. Ran this setup from about 1:30pm til 3pm.

    On to antenna #2......

    Two motorcycle exhaust pipes, w/mufflers attached, vertical di-pole. The pipes are hose clamped to an 8 foot 2x4 which was then clamped to a telescopic mast, clamped to one of the stepladders for stability. The overall height is about 17-18 feet, the whole assembly was too heavy for me to push the poles up at all. I did see an improvement in reception overall. This particular antenna resonates in the mid 53 mhz’s, so I switched to the TS-60 and tried for some 6 meter action, got nothing. Several attempts on HF yielded the same. The temperature was close to 90, and the weather forecast called for ‘scattered thunderstorms, so I shut down around 4 pm-ish on Saturday.

    Sunday arrived with cooler temps, partly sunny skies, but steady 15-20 mph breeze out of the NE. Got home from church around 1:30pm, was set up for round 2 of the challenge by 3 pm.

    Antenna #3.......

    I was sure that this would work, reception was fantastic ! Calling “cq” for an hour yielded nothing, the tuner just didn’t ‘feel right’, I never did get better than a 1.7 to 1 match, and the output looked a little weak on the meter.

    Onto my last hope, antenna #4, it was about 4:30 pm and I was starting to develop a complex !

    I had an old, 14 ft extension ladder, I fully extended it, then bolted the two sections together for a finished height of just under 14 ft. The steady breeze required some good, solid bracing for the big vertical radiator. The base of the vertical ladder is resting on 2 short pieces of 2x2, the horizontal ladder is resting on a short 2x4 at each end. Notice the old bedspring in the background, looking all dejected.... This setup was the ticket to making some contacts !I was ready to start calling cq at about 5 pm, at 5:08 pm I made my first contact, 14.243 mhz, SSB, the W9IMF Special Event station at the Indy Speedway !?!?!?!!!! YAY ! I was off and running ! A total of 8 contacts, all of them could be considered "DX" contacts from here. Evidently my "Ladder over Ladder" antenna has a low take off angle.

    I was really hoping that the sink would have worked better than it did, but, I had a blast ! Can’t wait til the next challenge !

    73’s!
Doug, KI4YOB

    One of the things we have noticed over the years is smaller "antennas" are more difficult to operate during the low-point in the solar cycle. As the solar cycle builds smaller antennas, like kitchen sinks, should work better. So don't give up on the kitchen sink! In a couple years it may work quite nicely. -- Erik n0ew